English Chess Forum

What young chess players can achieve:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0009zbj

I never understood the argument for recalibration. It was Sean Hewitt's doing and he wrote a paper explaining why it was done and I suppose I should go back and read it, but my problem is this: the idea behind the grading system is that if 2 players with grades 25 apart play a match then one of the...

Purely curiosity - especially with the big changes already done/coming! - but I'd actually be intrigued if anyone has checked if/how they worked out. As far as I can tell they seemingly meant 200 grades to stay stable - increases lower down - but they do seem to have picked up a bit. Anyway :) It d...

I can only comment on the last two points. 3. I don't think one anecdote makes a rating system flawed. Nevertheless we are looking at whether there should be some cut off. GDPR is one issue. 4. This is not something we envisage. Organisers want the evidence for section limits. Brian Valentine Manage...

Isn't Martin suggesting that the player moves up tp say 90th percentile when they start the game with the locational extra information and they drop to 73 when the addional information of the result becomes available? Incidently, the proposed monthly grading calculation will assume that a player wit...

The calculation here is fairly straightforward, but difficult to justify. The iteration method will get to the average of opponent's grades plus 50; which as already pointed out gives 176. In the final iteration the 40 point limit is introduced so 7 of those results become 186 with the other being 1...

I think I have enough extra information to give an update. Those in the know will have seen a consultation I have started with the graders about what should be held in the live player list. Suffice to say some good points have been made and I'm in discussions with various parties how to best meet th...

but I do notice when I am playing a junior supposedly 3-400 points weaker than me but apparently around 100 points stronger, judged either subjectively during the game or more objectively by looking at their tournament performance. Justin, I have taken a look at the most egregious case among your o...

Chris, I have been reluctant to join this debate while most of my current activity is around administration. However when you are thinking about manual entry to try out your system, I think I ought to add my own thoughts. I'd hate you to be too far into your adventure without considering the drawbac...

Brian, thank you for all the work that you have put into improving the grading system over many years, now, and good luck with the conversion to four digits (hugely overdue*) and monthly updates (one hopes this one is not a "Bridge too Far"). What would you suggest are suitable corresponding ECF bo...

We are in danger of going over old ground. We've certainly chronicled the work done in this thread: https://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3994 Basically I started the discussion in 2012 as an interested observer then when I "volunteered" as grading manager, instituted a change after listeni...

Jon Griffith deserves all the credit for overcoming the obstacles, so that the August update has been delivered in August.

Brian Valentine
Manager ECF Grading

David,

The situation is fluid. We are considering some half-way house which might meet your needs.

It has long been quite clear that monthly grading cannot be progressed with the current software (or the existing support for graders).

We had been working towards giving Nick an "I told you so moment", but it is not to be. Several people have been giving up their time to fix the problem, but even so we cannot publish till early next week. The issue has been outside our control and only emerged yesterday. We can only apologise for a...

...Whether an ECF Elo rating including more results would work any better remains to be seen and may well hinge on the hack proposed for handling improving juniors. I'm taken aback by the elegant solution has been demoted to a "hack"! There are two other levers that give me confidence that the prop...